Buildings are good to think with. This course will explore anthropological approaches to the study of architectural forms. It will focus primarily on the significance of domestic space and public private boundaries, gender and the body, the materiality of architectural form and materials and the study of architectural representations. The course will be structured chronologically and thematically beginning with early anthropological encounters with built forms and the philosophical, historical and social context of these approaches up to the present day within anthropology.

This course is open to second and third years who have attended at least Anth 1001: Introduction to Material Culture or C80. It will be assessed by one 4,000 word (max.) essay worth 100 percent of the overall grade. The essay is due the first day of the following term. The Essay will be on a subject of the students choosing in consultation with the course instructor. Incidents of plagiarism and self plagiarism will be pursued according to UCL policy. If you are uncertain as to the criteria and penalties please consult the departmental guidelines.

It is mandatory to attend lectures/tutorials. In addition, undergraduate students will be required to summarize and present at least one of the required week's readings to their undergraduate tutorial group. Participation is mandatory and on condition of handing in an AQCI of one of the week's required readings to the instructor, at the beginning of the tutorial session. Please use the AQCI format below

Electronic Coursework Submission

Once you are enrolled on a course within the Department of Anthropology, you will automatically be enrolled on its corresponding module on AnthroMoodle, which can be accessed via the internet on campus or from home. The course code and name are the same as the ones on top of your reading list. Go to http://moodle.ucl.ac.uk and use your user-id and password to access the course (note that this address contains no 'www'). On the course page simply follow the link for electronic submission to submit your work. The deadline for submission is the same for both, the printed and the electronic copy. If you have problems accessing moodle please contact anthmoodle-admin@ucl.ac.uk

ARGUMENT, QUESTION, CONNECTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: AQCI1 item

Create a one page document following the AQCI format for each individual reading to help structure your notes.

1. CENTRAL QUOTATION. Quote a sentence (or excerpts from linked sentences) from the text (or texts) that you think is central to the author's (or author's) implicit or explicit argument(s). Always cite the page.

2. ARGUMENT. In no more than three sentences, state the author's explicit or implicit argument. Be sure to include both: what the author is arguing for, and what they are arguing against.

3. QUESTION. Raise a question which you think is not fully, or satisfactorily, answered by the text. The question should be one of interpretation, or of inquiry, not simply a question of fact.

4. EXPERIENTIAL CONNECTION. Say in a few lines only, how the argument confirms or contradicts your own experience or common sense.

5. TEXTUAL CONNECTION. Connect the argument of this text to an argument or point you find in another reading assignment we have done in this course or you have picked up from earlier study at UCL. Present a quote from the other text (citing it properly), and explain how the present text's argument contrasts with, confirms, clarifies, or elaborates the other text's argument or point.

6. IMPLICATIONS. Lay out what this argument (#2 above) implies for understanding material culture, the improvement of society, relations between individuals, genders or groups (e.g., inter-ethnic, nations, etc.), who benefits, who gets hurt, or any other relevant facet of social or cultural reality (a few sentences only).

This week will examine the historical currents in 18th and 19th and early 20th century thought and anthropological practise that have influenced the trajectories of anthropological analyses of architecture. Starting from the work of the the Abbé Laugier and his primitivist fantasies, Lewis Henry Morgan and later Walter Benjamin the week will pinpoint those themes that still frame (and obscure) debates in the present along with new advances in the social sciences in the post-war period where we see the beginnings of the ‘linguistic turn’ and the rise of structuralism.

Archaeology has traditionally been that sub-field of anthropology that has concerned itself most emphatically with the study of material culture and architecture in particular. Particularly within the area of ethno-archaeology emerging from the New Archaeology of the post-war period - the interface between people, material culture and architecture assumes a renewed methodological and theoretical significance for the study of society. This week will examine this tradition along with Post-Processual response to the New Archaeology and the similarities and differences of these approaches towards the study of architecture.

Week 4 - Social anthropology and the House Societies of Levi-Strauss17 items

In the wake of Levi-Strauss’ work, architecture begins to reassume a central significance in the understanding of human societies, notably in relation to his concept of ‘house societies’. This week will examine Levi-Strauss’ contribution and the way it has turned anthropological inquiry towards the architectural and the different responses and innovations that have resulted since.

Week 5 - Void potentials: absence, power and the production of urban space in London - Guest lecturer: Saffron Woodcraft3 items

Urban planning is a tool for spatialising power and producing citizen subjectivities. Taking east London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a case, this lecture will explore how ‘community’ as political ideology and policy construct shapes urban planning and architecture. Based on ethnographic work with architects, planners and regeneration practitioners, the lecture will examine how the perceived failure of Britain’s post-war modernist housing estates is connected to a new ‘pro-social’ architectural form in the Olympic Park - the New London Vernacular. Focusing on the prominent role that ‘absences’ (empty space, absent communities, insufficient knowledge) are afforded in the Olympic Park’s planning process, the lecture will engage with the analytical potential of the ‘void’ to interrogate the production of power, space and citizen subjectivities in the neo-liberal city.

This week will discuss the rise of consumption studies in the built environment with particular emphasis on the home. The home is the context as well as the object of most consumer practices. The role of changing consumer practices and gender relations will be discussed, especially the impact of feminism and changing understandings of materiality in relation to the architecture of the home.

The flip side of building is destruction - as one thing is built another is destroyed. This week will look at the significance of destructive practices, the decay of architectural forms, ruins, and the politics of preservation from the destruction of architectural forms in antiquity to the destruction of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

This week will consider the history of attempts to render architectural form immaterial. It will focus on how societies have attempted to mortify such forms, minimalise them, render them evanescent, or transcendent or entirely immaterial as in recent technologies associated with 3-D printing. In particular, the focus will be on how such attempts to dematerialise architectural form are part of larger order attempts to regulate power and secure the incorrigible terms of social life.

Until very recently the anthropological understanding of architectural forms has focused on terrestrial bound concepts assuming the presence of Earth’s gravity. This week will examine the trajectory of long held Modernist utopian ideals of transcending Earth’s gravity in the aid of various utopian projects and will explore new research into architectural forms in micro-gravity, with specific focus on the International Space Station, the oldest human habitation to escape Earth’s gravity as well as other proposed habitats for the Moon and Mars. Here the traditional anthropological understanding of the imbrication of body and built form takes on new and unexpected dimensions that challenge traditional understandings of the body, self hood and architectural form. The week will revisit post-colonial critiques of the ‘terra nullius’ and consider the new conditions of an ‘extra terram nullius’ as it relates to extra-terrestrial habitation.